A school snow day is not what it once was, and we need to see it for what it is. The image of children frolicking in fresh-fallen snow building their own Frosty with a carrot nose and charcoal eyes is a Currier and Ives vision of Americana that is rarely seen today. It happens, but don’t take off your mittens to count the yards where Frosty stands. These days when school is closed due to snow the majority, almost all children, enjoy a day at home doing what children today do when time is theirs. They watch television. They sit with cell phones in-hand conversing, texting, and socializing with friends. They hunker down with electronic gaming. They stay warm and dry. Some children bundle up and head outdoors to play like children of yore but count the minutes until they are back indoors being children of today.
In the Currier and Ives lithograph, parent faces look out the window at children at play. Today’s parents trundled off to work in the snow, because a school snow day is not necessarily a vacation from work. Childcare and work are their snow day concerns. Parents with very young children may stay home if there is not an older child to assume childcare or local day care is filled. If children are old enough, they are on their own. A school snow day is a disruptive problem for working parents and all employers and Currier and Ives do not portray a solution.
The older the parent, the more Currier and Ives influences their thinking about school snow days. Grandparents certainly daydream of times when there was only black and white TV, a small transistor radio was the only personal electronics, and telephones had dials. A snow day was either sledding down hills and playing in the snow or sitting indoors doing jigsaw puzzles and board games. Times have changed.
The younger the parent, the more current their knowledge about what children really do when time is their own. It is likely that children of parents who work at home are hustled outdoors to experience the snow as relief in the homework site. Concerns for cyber security rank higher than worries of frostbite on snow days.
All the above written, there is one group of children who embrace a school snowy day. Older children able to drive snowmobiles or able to get to local ski hills will slam the door shut on their way outdoors and may not return home until dark or the gas tank empties.
We need to reinforce that school is closed when conditions for traveling to and from school are unsafe. These conditions are undeniable and school leaders need to close school when safety requires closing. Changing our understanding of snow days does not change this fact.
I do not write about how schools can use remote education in this blog. That is another issue. The misconceiving of a school snow day is enough to handle today. We need to update our conception of school snow days and treat them for what they are and not what they were. A day when school is closed due to snow (or any other wintery weather) is a gift from the clouds, not a walk down a lane that fewer and fewer remember.